like the later Clapham sect, were careful of intimate luxuries, had a
curious fashion of wearing shirts and smocks worked with "holy
embroideries," Biblical sentences or figures, which recall a similar
custom among the early Christians. At this time underclothing had
increased in quantity, for there are many indications that the men and
women of the middle ages were often content with a bare change of linen
at the best. _The Book of Courtesy_ (temp. Hen. VII.) orders the servant
to provide "clene sherte and breche" against his master's uprising, but
the laundering of the linen of the Percy household, a hundred and
seventy people, costs but forty shillings a year in the reign of Henry
VIII.

[Illustration: FIG. 48.--A Man-at-arms and a Man in a Shirt (early 14th
century). From Royal MS. 19 B. xv.]

With that modern period of dress which may be said to begin with the
Restoration, shirts increased in number. Women shifted their smocks when
coming in from field sports, fine gentlemen became proud of the number
of their shirts, as was that 18th-century lord who boasted to Casanova
of his changing a shirt several times in the day, his chin being shaved
on each occasion. A valuable document concerning the underclothing worn
by a citizen in the reign of Charles II. is afforded by the evidence of
the man who helped to strip the body of the suicide Sir Edmond Berry
Godfrey. "I pulled off his shoes," says Fisher, "three pairs of
stockings and a pair of socks, his black breeches and his drawers." His
coat and waistcoat, his shirt and his flannel shirt are also named. The
knight came by his end on an October day. He was therefore warmly clad.
His three pair of stockings will be noted: two pair are worn at the
present day by most men in court dress. The socks are a rarely named
addition, and the flannel shirt may be remarked. Loose ruffles of lace
were attached to shirt cuffs until during the great part of the 18th
century, and the ruffled or goffered shirt-front, which became common
under George III., continued in use in the early Victorian period, the
stiffly starched shirt-front taking its place at last even in evening
dress. The last quarter of the 19th century, breaking through the
strange mock-modesty which spoke of breeches as "inexpressibles," saw
the question of hygienic underclothing a subject much in debate, and now
most men other than the poorer sort wear, besides the shirt, a light
woollen vest and short drawers or long